Reply #7: John Nowacki - Deputy Dir./Legal Policy Free Congress Foundation

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http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientprofile.php?recipientID=126

The Free Congress Research and Education Foundation describes itself in its 1995 annual report as a

"non-partisan, non-profit, tax-exempt research and education institution dedicated to conservative governance, traditional values and institutional reform."

Led by Paul Weyrich, who also co-founded the Heritage Foundation, Free Congress received $5.0 million in grants over the 1992-1994 period to assist it in its efforts "to return to our nation's origins in limited government and personal liberty, despite the overweening power of the leviathan state."

One of Free Congress' major (and now independent) programs is National Empowerment Television, a nation-wide, interactive, 24-hour television network described in 1992 by political commentator David Gergen as "the creation of a new politics in America" for its ability to mobilize and interact with core constituencies on issues ranging from immigration to tax policy to welfare reform. The organization claims that NET now carries "its message of cultural conservatism and anti-Establishment politics into more than 11 million homes.




In 1974, a year after Paul Weyrich had founded the Heritage Foundation with seed money from Colorado brewer Joseph Coors, he launched the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC) with additional backing from the Coors fortune. (The friendship between Coors and Weyrich had begun when Weyrich was an aide to conservative Senator Gordon Allot of Colorado.)

The purpose of the CSFC was to influence the electoral process through fundraising schemes, circulation of propaganda, recruitment of conservative candidates, and grassroots organizing. Out of the CSFC grew the Free Congress Foundation, which has branched out into lobbying for conservative judicial appointments, communications schemes like "National Empowerment Television," and efforts to defeat gay rights initiatives.

Weyrich, a member of the extreme Catholic right and a professed admirer of the pro-Nazi demagogue Father Coughlin, has founded or cofounded numerous right-wing organizations, including the Moral Majority.

The Weyrich juggernaut played a decisive role in the ascendancy of Newt Gingrich and the right-wing Republicans of the 104th Congress. Among its top ten "Censored News stories of 1994," Project Censored cites the press's lack of coverage of the political machinations of Weyrich's Council for National Policy, a secretive high-level strategy-formulating organization whose membership is a Who's Who of the far right.

Admitting that he and his colleagues are not conservatives in the traditional sense, he has described the New Right as "radicals who want to change the existing power structure." Weyrich was one of the earliest commentators to advance the idea that the United States is engulfed in a cultural civil war.

"It may not be with bullets, and it may not be with rockets and missiles, but it is a war, nonetheless. It is a war of ideology, it's a war of ideas, it's a war about our way of life. And it has to be fought with the same intensity, I think, and dedication as you would fight a shooting war."

Free Congress Research and Education Foundation received $1.312 million from the Carthage Foundation (a Scaife family foundation) for general operating support in 1992 and $450,000 from the Bradley Foundation in 1994; it was founded with seed money from the Coors brewery fortune. Free Congress is a mult-issue organization, and Weyrich is one of the political gurus of the conservative movement...



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Sponsors National Empowerment Television (NET TV), the ultraconservative cable network. NET TV received $300,000 from the Scaife Family Foundation in 1992 and more than $40,000 from the Bradley foundation in the same year.



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Free Congress sponsors its own satellite network, National Empowerment Television, or NET TV. NET TV (channel 30 in Milwaukee) helps give a national audience to groups like the Christian Coalition, the National Rifle Association and Phyllis Shlafley's Eagle Forum. NET TV helped torpedo the Lani Guinier nomination. As head of this group, Robert Billings along with Weyrich engineered the formation of the Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell as its head. According to investigative reporter Russ Bellant, the Free Congress distributes "virulently homophobic literature."


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131 institutional roles for $6,301,192
(show all | hide all)

Year Role Hrs/week Pay Source 990 src

Nowacki, John
2 roles; show | hide | all (2) | profile total pay: $ 143,116
2003 Director / Legal Policy 40 $ 72,870 990 Schedule A, Part I
2002 Director / Legal Policy 40 $ 70,246 990 Schedule A, Part I